photography

Genoa, Nevada

lsmoore 3 Comments

I stumbled across Genoa, Nevada by accident.

The tiny town’s on state hwy 206 about an hour east of South Lake Tahoe and was the first settlement in the Nevada Territory back in 1850. It’s beautiful cemetery’s got to be one of the best collections of unique, handmade grave markers I’ve ever seen, all in one place.

Members of the grounds crew stopped me, not once, but three times to ask politely if they could help me find anyone in particular. My picture-taking frenzy made them think maybe I was a reporter.

They have one famous denizen, Snowshoe Thompson. A hero who skied through many seasons  of harsh Sierra Nevada snow storms to deliver mail and supplies.

I loved all the ordinary cowboys and pioneers whose families thought enough of them to paint, sculpt, carve and decorate their graves then keep them tended, some for decades.

I gushed praise to the head caretaker when he stopped to ask if he could help me find someone. He was modest about how beautifully the cemetery was tended. He said he’d lived in Genoa his whole life. His ancestors were buried there. He’d met his wife when he was in the service. She was from North Carolina and swore she’d never spend her life in the Carson valley of Nevada. Thirty years later, there they were, and happy too.

If anybody knows of other cemeteries with this kind of folk craftsmanship in the stones, please make a comment. I’d love to see more! I’m sure others would too.

Solar Eclipse in a Graveyard!

lsmoore 4 Comments

I just had the most awesome cemetery afternoon ever!

I went to Virginia City, Nevada to check out a gorgeous old graveyard.

Had no idea there was about to be an annular solar eclipse until an excited group of folks with welders’ masks and funky glasses showed up and clued me in.

They loaned me their glasses so I wouldn’t burn out my retinas – think old style 3D glasses from the 50’s.

OMG! The view was so cool.

Eclipse Annular

I paid back their kindness by showing them eclipse shadows on a couple of tombstones.  These shadows are nature’s way of letting us see an eclipse safely.  You could do the same thing with a pin hole projector.

The needles of a juniper tree provided the pin holes for me. I think any leafy tree would do.

The Sierra Nevada mountains… land of pioneers, gold mines and cowboys.

Faces on Tombstones

lsmoore 3 Comments

You meet a lot of people in graveyards.  Every face tells a story.

Sometimes it’s just a story

 of time passed. 

Sometimes it’s a story of sorrow and loss.

 

Sometimes the sheer beauty of a face tells the sculptor’s story. I love those, don’t you?

Hey, thanks everybody who took my poll last week. Who knew there were so many of us taking our lunches to the grave?

Give me your best shots!

lsmoore 5 Comments

 

I wouldn’t say this is my best shot photographically speaking, but it’s one of my favorite tombstones. I wondered as I looked at it from several angles whether someone had pruned the bush into these massive black wings. There were no clues that I could see.   Maybe in the summer glorious leafy wings sprout from the stone. Or maybe the illusion only works with bare branches. I’ll have to go back and see.

Give me your best shots! 

I’ve seen some great tombstones on blogs out there lately. If you’ve taken a graveyard photo that you’re particularly proud of, post a comment and tell me where it is.  I’ll try out the “reblog” button.

 

Westphalia, Missouri

lsmoore 4 Comments

The discordant mix of highway noise, turtledoves and church bells lent a surreal quality to my visit to this little cemetery.

It was one of those slam on the brakes and make a right, no time for turn signals kind of stops. Ever had one of those? Two-lane, State Highway 63 twists through the eastern edge of the Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri. About 20 miles south of the capital, Jefferson City, the landscape gets more and more rural. I passed through several tiny towns before the tall, marble crucifix that marked this graveyard called my name.

I parked in a large, gravel lot in front of an auto repair shop right beside the highway. A broken down school bus sat in one corner like it’d been there for years and would be for more. A well used tow truck was parked in front of the boxy, aluminum sided shop.

The Westphalia cemetery sits right next to it on a hillside gently sloping up toward a church with a high, pointed white steeple, the source of the tolling bells.

Twilight added to a sense of being slightly off-center to reality here. My step off the gravel and onto the cemetery’s thick, well-tended lawn was like a step out of time.

Icouldn’t translate the language on the markers.

I don’t speak a word of German. Even the street signs in tiny Westphalia are printed in two languages. The flowing script on the porcelain placards was beautiful though.

 

Iron work crosses spoke to the poverty and austerity of the folks who settled here.

I got the feeling from looking around that not much had changed.